Such is the heroism of solitude! But not yet have we reached its purest and noblest form. These men and women were lonely, it is true; but they were sustained, after all, by a great hope of the future, by dreams of prosperity and happiness to come as the fruit of toil, by ambitions for the children who would survive to better and fuller days. Braver even than these are the men who have faced loneliness without hope--who have looked not merely on solitude, but on solitude ending in defeat and death--and still have lived as those who had no fear. The classic example of this great heroism has been given to the world by our own age, in the story of Captain Scott. Whenever my own faint heart begins to fail under the strain of burdens absurdly light, I take up a copy of Captain Scott's Journals, as I would take up a copy of holy scripture, and I read as long as my tear-filled eyes can see the page the items that he jotted down in his diary on those last terrible days before he died. Here he is in the midst of the vast solitudes of the arctic wastes, struggling along with his two half-dead companions, his feet frozen, food gone, fuel gone, and a hurricane beating him helpless to the ground. He knows he cannot get through to his goal, he knows there is no living soul within hundreds of miles to bring him succor. On March 19th he speaks of their "forlorn hope"; on the 22nd he confesses that "he must be near the end"; on the 29th he speaks of death and says flatly, "I do not think we can hope for any better things now. * * * We are getting weaker, and the end cannot be far." But never once, for all his anguish and solitude, does he give way. "We shall stick it out to the end," is his word. He can even joke at one time in a grim and terrible sort of way. "No human being could face (this) storm," he writes on March 18th, "and we are nearly worn out. My right foot is gone--two days ago I was the proud possessor of the best feet. These are the steps of my downfall." And then there come the last hours. His two companions lie dead, one on either side of him. Outside of his little snow hut is the raging storm. He is alone with death. And as calmly as though he were writing a report in the naval offices in London, he scrawls with frozen fingers those immortal letters, first to Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Bowers, the mothers of the two men whose bodies are beside him, then to his own mother and his wife, then to his friends, Sir James M. Barrie and Vice-Admiral Egerton, then the statement to the public with its closing words, "I do not regret this journey, which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another and meet death with as great fortitude as ever in the past. We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last. But had we lived I should have had a tale to tell